While an American space craft with 3 crew members -- one guy, two women -- is in orbit, World War III breaks out. The astronauts manage to return safely to the devastated surface, where they encounter a primitive warrior who was frozen in the ice centuries ago and thrawed out by the heat of nuclear bombs. Banding together, these four set out to find what is left of the human race in this day after doomsday world.
This book, and most of John's Charalton work, are hard to find nowdays. I myself am always on the look for the Charalton material. John was good story teller back then as well. Wait, would this be one of those " his old stuff was better " moments?
Oh, no, no, no. Fun and better than practically all other Charlton stuff at the time (not to mention a lot of DC and Marvel stuff), but DEFINITELY not an "old stuff is better" moment. Yikes!
I'm a huge fan of this series, but I gotta tell ya, the originals S-U-C-K! The paper is bad, the colors are atrocious. Granted, Charlton didn't know how great this series would be revered at the time.
Do yourself a favor, and look for the Fantagraphics reprints circa 1986, and you will see Doomsday +1 as it should have been done. The reprint is called "The Doomsday Squad". Unfortunately, the reprints do not feature the original Byrne covers (which are some of my favorites). There are two new awesome Byrne covers that are very good, but the remaining covers are done by Gil Kane.
I remember on the old Magnus site that there was going to be another reprint of this title, but with the original Byrne covers. I never saw it at the stands, so I can only assume that it never came out. You can still see solicited artwork on the Magnus site for the first couple of issues. Anybody know anything about that?
Yes, yes, what James and Bob said, PLUS, it has a cover by Neal Adams, PLUS back up stories by cool Fantagraphics types like Dan Clowes - how often do you see John Byrne, king of Superhero comics and Dan Clowes, king of the indies in the same book?
And even funnier, how often do you see Superhero hater Gary Groth publish John Byrne?
I have to say, the Doomsday Squad is worth it's weight in gold - much easier to find than the originals, and printed better, etc etc - A must have for Byrne fans!
Responding all messages, Doomsday + 1 seems to have
been reprinted no less than three times.
First by Charlton itself.
Second by Fantagraphics. This is the best of all
editions, good paper quality and printing. It's got
new covers, the first two by JB and the remaining by
Gil Kane (not a bad replacement, if you ask me!).
Third by a REALLY small publisher named ACG. This one
(which I have) is in B&W, but keeps the original
covers. Printing and paper quality are quite bad.
"Responding all messages, Doomsday + 1 seems to have
been reprinted no less than three times.
First by Charlton itself."
Yeah, it's worth pointing out, in case anyone is going to be hunting for back issues, that issues #7-12 of the original Charlton series feature reprints of the contents of issues #1-6, without any new material.
Actually, this brings up a question for John or anyone else who might know... why didn't Charlton print the 7th D+1 story (the one which appeared in Charlton Bullseye) in the regular book? I know with E-Man they put an unused story in Charlton Bullseye because the book was cancelled, but Doomsday +1 was not cancelled at that point. Wouldn't it have made more sense to put that story into issue #7, and then start the reprints after that?
This message has been edited by czeskleba on Mar 30, 2004 11:40 PM
